as curtains close on us
by K. East
Summary: Death is cruel, and death is permanent, but death is also a liar. Step into the shoes of eight different people and you will begin to understand how interconnected their lives really were.
1. open

_as curtains close on us_

After death, the way society looks at a person changes. The best traits, if one is well-liked, are emphasized - idolized. If one is not, the worst become more potent than ever before.

After death, true feelings emerge, until the deceased is not his self but some lacquered façade, a shallow and subjective painting of his self.

Death is cruel, and death is permanent, but death is also a liar.


	2. chapter 1: james

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 1: james

You are James Potter.

On your first day of school, you are shy, and you are scared. You don't have any brothers or sisters, so you're not used to interacting with other children. But you want to keep your head up high, and your dad pats you on the back while your mum kisses you on the cheek - everything seems alright.

"Be good, now," they say in unison as if you're a holy terror at home. Cue the eye roll. You are _perfectly_ behaved at home... mostly.

Someone loads your trunk onto the train and, wholly alone now, you climb on the first chance you get. Thankfully, most students are still lingering on the platform; an empty compartment is available.

You sit, and already feel anxiety welling up in your heart - it's not as though you don't have friends, but you don't have _close_ friends. You don't even know what close friends feel like. Who will you talk to at meals? Who will you sit next to in classes? Suddenly the day you've looked forward to for _eleven_ years has blackened.

And then, much to your surprise, the compartment door slides open. _Who would want to sit next to me?_

Who, indeed. It's a dark-haired boy, your age, with sharp eyes and an even expression. He doesn't look homesick at all.

"All the other compartments are full," he says, flicking a strand of hair from his eyes. "Can I sit here?"

You're hooked. But a small creature of meanness rears its head and without meaning to, you say, "Well, is there something wrong with your bum?"

Oops.

Now the boy would probably just roll his eyes and leave, or, worse yet, say something insulting back, like, _You'd know if you saw it, four-eyes._ And that would...

... that would hurt, you admit.

But neither happens. Instead, the sharp eyes get a little warmer, and that even expression breaks out into a grin. He sits across from you, and you blink.

"Name's Sirius," he informs you. "Sirius Black."

"James Potter," you manage to say. "Isn't that a kinda funny name? Sirius?"

He looks vaguely offended, and wildly you wonder where this new, belligerent side of you has come from. But then Sirius relaxes again, and replies, "Yeah, I suppose it is."

You offer up a smile of your own. "Is it after the Dog Star?"

He nods.

And some part of yourself is glad, not because Sirius, Sirius Black is named after the Dog Star, but you have made a connection to someone. And this - this new attitude that just seemed to _form_ from your anxiety... well, you like it.

Maybe you'll use it to your advantage in the future.

Your fingers run lightly over your hair, a nervous quirk that has become pure habit by now, and you start to drum the floor with your feet. Sirius notices but doesn't seem to mind, which just affirms your liking for him.

_Maybe_, you think, _this'll be one of those things that last forever._ Maybe you're not so shy after all. You've found a friend, and maybe he has the power to bring you out of your cage.


	3. chapter 2: lily

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 2: lily

The defining moment for you, Lily Evans, is not those pitiful days leading up to the incident, nor the incident itself, but the days after it.

You've been hurt, in more ways than one. Your best friend has truly betrayed you, but this was not his first slip-up, to be honest, and you are more than ready to let him go.

It's for the better, you believe, as you let someone you once cared deeply about merely fall away from your life. It is _so_ much easier than you imagined.

At fifteen, you've found a pretty good definition of love - caring, hope, trust. And you _like_ James Potter, to be sure - the sound of his name makes you sigh and you have a private smile for all his jokes. But you have long wondered if you _love_ him.

In the days leading up to the incident, you believe you might. _Caring_ is certainly there - the very idea of his being hurt - sadness replacing the goofy smile on that handsome, immature, _sweet_face - invokes a twinge of pain in your heart. You certainly hope - on some days you see it there, that lingering chance at friendship, the smile he reserves for you; on some days you hear it in the hallways, floating on the grapevine ("Potter fancies you, did you know?") and creating a sense of doubtlessness when it comes to your mutual affection.

And there is trust, too, the deepest trust you imagine can exist. He _knows_ you and you think you know him, too. There are times when talking to him, he seems utterly real; you have seen him embarrassed and you have seen him angry, you have seen him happy and you have seen him excited to the point of foolishness. You have seen him in his _best_ and his _worst_, and you know he is _human_.

And you are the kind of person who trusts other human beings with your _life_. You have seen yourself in James - the compassion, the worries, the need to trust and trust deeply; how can you say no to that?

So you decide you love him, and it's the easiest decision you've ever made.

On the day of the incident, he takes advantage of you, or tries. He uses the moment, your anger, your love - to ask, as if he'd be embarrassed otherwise. _Go out with me, Evans_.

It's not as if you haven't been dying to heart this question from him, but that's the problem. It's not a question. It's an expectation.

God, how can you even know if he means it? If James knows (and he does) you lo - like him, and he's still not brave enough to act on it until it accidentally slips out of his mouth, then how can't you question his sincerity?

And if you question his sincerity, can you trust him anymore?

So on the day of the incident, you can't love him. You can't love him because of a few words, because of a technicality in your system. You can't love him because honestly he's a big fat _jerk_, but you. still. do.

And that's why the days after the incident are your defining moment. Because you, Lily Evans, have broken the most fundamental rule of all.


	4. chapter 3: sirius

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 3: sirius

You were told that when you die your life will flash before your eyes.

But then you must not be dying, because nothing is happening.

All you know is that five minutes ago you were out fighting, doing what you were meant to do - and you want to be out there right now, feeling adrenaline pump through your veins and meaning attach itself to your life once more. Instead you're floating somewhere in oblivion, some good-for-shit kind of heaven.

"Sirius," your friends would say, "Don't be ridiculous. You are doing so much good right now."

Your friends wanted you to know that you are valuable even when doing nothing, that your very existence is beneficial to theirs. And while that may be true, you honestly cannot help but think someone else could easily take that place.

_You_ are Sirius Black._ You_ are a fighter.

When you're not active - when you're not making full use of this mind, this body, this manpower - you are just a _placeholder_. No, you won't play games with other peoples' lives, but you sure as hell will throw your own out on the line.

That's all you're good for, anyhow. Right?

See, you have a complex. You _can't_ mind your own business. When James started fancying Lily, you meddled. When Regulus became a Death Eater, you tried your best - oh, how you tried - to intervene. And now that you're dead, or so you've been told, there is no way you're not moving on. Because you're _Sirius Black_.

You've made your decision, and maybe that's what death was waiting for, because slowly but surely, memories start to come back.

And they mostly focus around Lily and James, because they _were_ your life.

Lily and James at school, making your young years better than you'd ever imagined. Perhaps you were saved then, saved from being drawn too closely to darkness like your family had.

Lily and James, dying, and leaving you the sorriest man in Britain. God, in the _world_. What you did to them was a _thousand_ times worse than what Peter did - what anyone did, because you could have saved their lives - you could have stopped trying to save yourself and you could have _saved them_.

You deserved Azkaban.

Lily and James bestowing their son upon you. You loved him then and you love him now. Perhaps not as a son. Perhaps you were, as Molly said, looking for another James; but you needed closure, too, and all you can think about right _now_ is how you are leaving Harry behind, an abandoned son again.

You almost change your mind and stay. But eternal uselessness for a material world, a few more years with someone... is not worth it.

Because to be honest, you are so young; and you have so little to show for your time in the world. You're not done living, and you'll be damned if you let death get in your way.


	5. chapter 4: albus

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 4: albus

They think you're invincible.

You can see it in their eyes - in Harry's eyes, in the eyes of every witch or wizard in the Order; they really do think nothing can happen to you.

Yes, you once thought you were invincible, too. The way you spent your youth is only a blur on some days, but on others you can recall that sharp confidence, the belief that harm could never come your way, like it was only minutes ago.

You were so young and brave. You came from a truly dysfunctional family. And you were utterly, foolishly, in love.

Gellert seemed to think you were invincible, too, because he put all his faith in you. Two young men, mere children really, playing with an art deeper and darker than either of you could handle. You escaped. He was consumed by it.

You can still recall his face, and you dwell on it more than you should.

It was the nineteen-forties. Neither of you were youthful anymore, but facing him was -

- a memory in itself; you recalled all those buried feelings... and brought them to a close.

"You find me again, Albus," Gellert laughed calmly as he stood, wand raised, in the wake of his ruin. There was resounding silence as you smiled grimly again.

It had taken you far too long to get there. You'd made mistakes, too many of them - mistakes you learn from now, but you shouldn't have afforded then.

"Yes, I took a bit of leave from my teaching position to pay you a visit," you said, eyes watching him warily. "My dear friend."

"Not anymore, Albus!" he cried, directing a blast of magic at you. You deflected easily, realizing later that... he hadn't really been trying.

Grindelwald - Gellert - circled like a cornered animal, but didn't come near. From there you saw everything - the desperation in his blackening eyes, the grey lining blond.

It had been far too long.

"A proper duel, then, Gellert?" you suggested, feeling a murmur of fire inside your soul as you noticed the wand in his hand.

He seemed to notice this too, and he calmed again. "But of course." His eyes closed. "Grindelwald and Dumbledore. The showdown always meant to happen."

He thought he couldn't lose.

You knew better.

And though now you are on the verge of losing your life, you know there are worse things - far worse things - that could happen. You will not shy from Death's door.

You have lost love, and you have felt pain and burden no man has felt. You have strayed between good and evil, and you have left a legacy that runs deeper than the obituary they will soon print in the newspaper.

They think you are invincible, but how can you explain to them the most potent thing you have learned? Invincibility is given to all men. You did not have to seek it out. You did not have to drink it, or create it. Death is only part of existence, and you, Albus Dumbledore, will never cease to exist.


	6. chapter 5: severus

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 5: severus

The moment you start to love Lily Evans is the moment you start to change.

It seems to you that every smile she smiles is sweet, every word she says is soft, every little thing she does sends you a million miles up and down into the clouds.

Oh, you've liked her for a long time, to be sure, but there has never been _this_ feeling before; before, she clung to you because you _were_ her connection to the wizarding world, and you liked that dependency, but now -

- now she is friends with you because she wants to be friends with you. Now she defends you because she wants to defend you. Now, you think, you could go on the rest of your life and not worry about a single other soul but yourself and Lily Evans.

Except that was a long time ago. You are now thirty-five years old, and Lily is dead.

It's funny that you should still even be doing what you are doing. Your life is on the line because two of the most powerful wizards of the decade are currently vying for your loyalty. You've chosen one - for what? For the fifteen year-old _memory_ of a woman you onced loved.

No one trusts you, and this is a pretty decent reason why.

In a world of deceit and double-crossing, how can love - the faint _silhouette_ of love - stir anyone? If your soul is so black you hadn't even made this choice on your own, then you don't even trust _yourself_.

But you would die for her. You would do anything for her. And for some reason, you would do anything for Dumbledore, as though his being the last person to trust you is any reason for you to trust him.

In the end you'll just end up his pawn, and yet you, sullen and severe schoolteacher _Severus Snape_... do not mind.

There's still anger, though. It slips out from time to time, much like that old prejudice slipped out ("_Mudblood_," you hissed, and later that day you'd said it over and over again to yourself, trying to determine just where you'd gone wrong, just what part of a few odd sounds was enough to break the most beautiful friendship you'd ever had).

Anger, to see every day Lily's child, so like his father in every way, but so like his mother you hate him for it.

Anger, because when you see the resent in those green eyes it is like seeing the resent of twenty years ago all over again. It is like being punctured, the same old wound, every day even when you can't do a thing about it.

Anger, that you would be indebted still to a man you _hate_ with every atom of your _being_. But the truth is, you would hate any man to marry her, any man to die for her instead of you, and you are angrier that the one who did turned out to be a better person than you'll ever be.

The anger will never, ever go away, and you know that. But every day - _every day_ - you spend watching time slip by, every day you are alive, you heal a little. You've done what you can.

You have _changed_. And maybe once it was only Lily who kept you on the side you're on. Maybe once you were acting only for her, pushing down your own allegiances. But as time goes on, the facade you have lived under for so long begins to destroy the anger behind it, until you would do _anything_ for this cause - Lily's eyes or not - even give up your life.

You _are_, ultimately, good.


	7. chapter 6: peter

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 6: peter

If Severus is ultimately good then you, Peter Pettigrew, are an angel.

It's not what you are about to do - no, no human being could ever forgive you for that - but what you will do later to repay for it.

You can't help but be touched - they have made _you_ the Secret-Keeper, the capsule of their existence, the very shoulders on which the burden of three lives now rests. For the first, but not the last time in your life, you are completely necessary.

Except at the moment that scares the shit out of you.

"Where are they?" the man screams. "Where are they, you flea-bitten mongrel? You fat hulk -"

You are dangling quite helplessly by your ankle, your face hot as blood rushes to your head. As they always have, the insults cut straight to the quick (though - perhaps - the lighter side of you may've once argued _Sirius is the one with fleas, and in any case I've lost a great deal of weight thanks to this anxiety_).

But right now you can't possible think this. Right now you are quite really being _tortured to death._

"Crucio!" he yells again as the Death Eater beside him starts to laugh. "Bloody rat! We know Black isn't the Secret-Keeper, why don't you just _tell us_?!"

You scream. You contort. You're begging, pleading, _please, I'll do anything, stop!_ You are literally blinded with the pain: hundreds of knives being thrust coldly into your body and ripped across your skin. _Please... I'll tell you..._

"Alright, let him talk," the masked man growls. You drop heavily to the floor, panting and shuddering. "Don't let him change, though. He's an Animagus."

As if you hadn't already thought of that. As if you hadn't thought of every possible way, every possible safeguard against letting it get to this point: hiding? How could that be explained to the oblivious Dumbledore, or anyone else for that matter? Forcing Sirius to take it back, be the Keeper - and practically admit that you'd been giving away information all along, torn out of you by a few threats and spells...

Fake your own death? It's an idea you'd been toying with, but now it's far too late. James and Lily bequeathed this information unto you, and _you can't protect it any longer_...

"Godric's Hollow," you gasp as the cold tip of a wand presses against your neck. Iit comes tumbling out now. The town, the address, a description of the house, even the room in which baby Harry sleeps -

You have become...

A monster. Consumed by fear.

And soon you will be his servant. Come time for the Dark Lord's return, _you_ will be the first on a list of new recruits. You will be the one needed once again - the Animagus, the ex-member of the Order, the man with _no place left to go_.

But Peter, you are an _angel_.

Not for what you have just done - a foolish, cowardly, and selfish act - but for what you _will_ do.

For sixteen years from now, you will have to make a decision -

do what the Dark Lord needs you to do? or

give your life for the Potters the way you should have done a long time ago?


	8. chapter 7: remus

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 7: remus

Life has never been so steady for you.

At a terribly young age your life was changed for the worse. Suddenly _Remus Lupin_ was not merely a child but an afflicted child. You would not just be a student but a special student. You are not only a man but a dangerous man, and that has given you an existence so hectic not even the unfailing routine of once-a-month can be a comfort.

You are a teacher now, and it seems so easy, so correct, as if it's what you're meant to do. You have lost everything you knew before, and so somehow it is satisfying living this mundane schedule: wake up, eat, teach, eat, teach a little more, write a lesson plan, eat, sleep.

There are no worries - no _war_, certainly no mischief or school duties as before, no wondering where your income will be. Of course there is the lingering knowledge that you will be somewhere else next year, but right now you're _relieved_. For the first time in your life, you almost feel normal.

That is, until you see Sirius again.

He stares up at you the way he did from the newspapers, sunken eyes, sallow skin, a desperate expression (the expression of a murderer, you think furiously). All the handsomeness is gone from his face, but all your resent is present still.

For a moment, you want to _throttle_ him.

But then you remember - _oh, that's right, he was innocent after all_ - and you find yourself clasped in a hug, your eyes warm, two men who had thought themselves utterly along in this world only to discover they're not - they're _not_.

Later you will say, "Seeing you innocent was as good as seeing James and Lily again, Sirius."

Even if the reunion was only a few minutes long - you _knew_ from then on -

And he will turn toward you, eyes a little brighter, complexion healthier, but expression just as desperate as it is now. And he will say, "There's nothing to describe how happy I am to be called 'innocent', Remus... even if only by a select few. But nothing would be as good as seeing James and Lily alive again."

So now you go quiet - it's what you're dwelling on even as you are scrambling about what do with Ppeter - how to clear Sirius's name, because frankly, the current plan seems flawed -

- and furthermore, you cannot help but wonder why something meant to be routine, day-by-day, has brought into your life incidents just as worrisome, just as hectic. You can feel, in the future, more chaos.

Chaos that has come and gone - not only in the form of war, but in the form of love, something that hasn't _quite_ presented itself since 1981.

But the troubles you predict now are... only possibilities. They are merely predictions.

And for you, they say, trouble comes unfailingly. Once a month, to be exact.


	9. chapter 8: tom

_as curtains close on us_

chapter 8: tom

Where does one start?

Tom Marvolo Riddle - a name you detest. You breathed the air of pureblood supremacy before you even so much as heard of the Wizarding world.

And you have grown from that, only that. It seems buried deep in your charisma that your charm, your intelligence - should all be exploited in malice.

People are not born good or evil. You made a decision, a conscious decision. It was not when you hurt the other children from your orphanage, or when you were sorted into Slytherin house, or even when you murdered your first victim, at the age of fifteen.

Even murderers can change for the better.

No, it was when you decided to forgo friends, forgo trust, forgo love. You chose not to love or be loved the way a child chooses to play with matches, and you exist now, the fruit of that choice, scarred and twisted and torn beyond repair.

You _know_ love - you know it in the face your father gave you, in the name your mother gave you, in the kindness with which you were treated under Dumbledore's futile car.

So Dumbledore was wrong in that aspect. You understand love better than anyone. You have had it, and now you lack it, but you spent so long searching it out that you finally decided it simply was not worthwhile.

Which may be the reason why you're dead, now.

It used to be said that you couldn't die, not completely. That you weren't human enough to.

That was your goal. To forgo death, the same way you have forgone love. If one can escape death - can escape judgment - then one is quite literally invincible. If one can just barely remain alive, then one is capable of all things.

But what you have so foolishly done, Tom, is in your quest to make yourself eternal you have forgotten everything else.

You have forgotten friendship; you have forgotten trust; you have forgotten how to fight, and how to accept, and how to change. Yyou have forgottn how to choose. You have forgotten how to adapt.

And so now you are only a static creature, your soul all but destroyed - instead of strengthening it, amplifying it, you have weakened it. Yes, you cannot die - maybe not completely; even now, your chosen evil lurks in the hearts of old followers - but you cannot live either.

You have pushed yourself to the point of oblivion.

So now, return to your graveyards and to your chambers and to your orphanages. Where young Tom Riddle lurks, Voldemort does _not_.

And where Voldemort does not lurk, you are not good... you are not evil. Even murderers, as they say, can change for the better.


End file.
